Kissy Kissy

“[Let your] love be sincere (a real thing); hate what is evil [loathe all ungodliness, turn in horror from wickedness], but hold fast to that which is good.”

Romans 12:9 (Amplified)

 

 

Fake love.

Like the pretentious air kiss that two celebrity ladies plant on

each others cheek we can be very insincere in our love.

We talk a good talk but we don’t always walk the walk.

Sincere love isn’t always convenient.

Sometimes, it’s downright inconvenient!

Sometimes, it even hurts…a lot.

But we aren’t called to a convenient or comfortable walk.

I am certainly not advocating that we have to go looking for pain or misery.

But we do have to count the cost of what it means to have sincere love, what it means to hate what is evil and what it means to hold fast to what is good.

When we do that we may find we do not enter into that relationship that would draw us away from Christ or take the job, regardless of the generous salary offered.

Sincere love seeks the interests of the other above self.

Listen to how Paul expressed it in Philippians 2:3-5

 

“Do nothing from factional motives [through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends] or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Instead, in the true spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than and superior to himself [thinking more highly of one another than you do of yourselves].

Let each of you esteem and look upon and be concerned for not [merely] his own interests, but also each for the interests of others.

Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:]”

Speaking only for myself – those verses are enough to send me back

to my prayer closet for a very long time.

But sincere love isn’t ‘grown’ just in the confines of the prayer closet.

It is grown, inch-by-painful-inch, in the trenches of life.

Have you come face to face with sincere love today?

Did it cost you something?

If not, it may have been fake love masquerading as sincere.

Thank God He equips us with His Holy Spirit that we might grow in love for Him and for others.

Not the air-kiss kind.

The lay-down-your-life kind!